Flashing glow plug light - am I being blagged?

[jonnyprocter]

Hi

Bought a second hand 2009 Tiguan last week and was taking it for a motorway drive today. As I hit 70mph the glow plug light came on and the car went into limp mode with the "engine fault workshop" error message. I pulled over and, after I restarted the engine, the error had cleared and the car started normally only for it to return the next time I hit 70mph.

So I took it to the non-VW dealer that I bought the car from and a technician apparently plugged it into the code reader. He said, via the customer service rep, that the only things showing were DPF related and the last one was an incomplete regen....is this really an error or simply info showing the current state of an ongoing process? He tried to make it sound like a bad thing that the regen was incomplete.

The CS guy said that once the regen was complete, things would be fine and I should take it for a long burn on the motorway and ignore the warning light/limp mode. The error would apparently clear itself and the engine would be fine. However, he also said that they could not do a forced regen as the DPF was pretty much empty - this didn't really tie in with a DPF fault occuring and what he was saying generally sounded dodgy.

Nothing he said sounded really convincing and needless to say, after trying what he said, the fault still occurs whenever I hit about 70mph. No DPF warning light has come on although I am not sure if the 2009 Tiguan has one?

I've read numerous posts on here/elsewhere that say that this is often linked to egr valve issues but for some reason this needs reading whilst the engine is running because the fault resets when ignition is turned off. Does anybody know if this is true?

I am obviously going to take the car back asap to get it looked at but I want to be as well armed as possible. So if anybody has any info/ideas, that would be great :)

thanks

jonny

[zollaf]

dpf , yes, it does. fault will be logged in vcds. give them the car and tell them to fix it or take it to another garage and get it fixed yourself, then send the first garage the bill.

[jonnyprocter]

Hi....thanks for the reply but not sure which bit you were replying to with "yes it does"...were you confirming that it has the DPF error light?

The CS guy claimed that no other fault was present....which I found hard to believe if the DPF is actually showing as empty and no DPF light coming on.

[zollaf]

yes it has a dpf.

[jonnyprocter]

yes it has a dpf.

Hi, just re-read what I put. I was referring to whether or not the Tiguan has a DPF light rather than a DPF itself.

[turboextreme]

This sounds like a faulty Dpf pressure sensor common failure on early tiguan part costs around £57.00 vw
31952

The early tiguan dash has no dpf warning light only the check engine light Epc light and glow plug light later dashes are better on 2011 onwards like this.
31953

[jonnyprocter]

So I took it back this morning after the same happened but this time at 30-40mph. They plugged it into the code reader and said that there is a dpf error but it is still showing as pretty empty. I guess that it is trying to start a regen but another issue is stopping this from happening (poss the pressure sensor mentioned above) and this is throwing up the error. Whether this alone would put it into limp mode I don't know?


They tried a forced regen as they wondered whether the sensor was incorrectly reporting an empty DPF but it threw up a turbo underpressure error and a smell of diesel coming into the cabin. I guess that this may actually be the reason why the regen is aborting.

Would this seem about right?

thanks again